Israel’s failed-state strategy
On Thursday, Israeli tanks and troops invaded northern Gaza, encountering fierce small-arms fire and some rocket attacks from armed Gazans. Twenty-one Palestinians, mostly militants, and an Israeli soldier were killed. It was the largest Israeli troop presence in the territory since the unilateral Israeli withdrawal of August 2005. Late Thursday, Palestinian Interior Minister Said Siam called on Gazans to “prepare to repel the Israeli attack” — the first time a Palestinian governmental official has called Palestinians to arms since the crisis erupted.
The day’s battles continued the cycle of violence between the Israelis and the Palestinians that has simmered for months but exploded during the past two weeks. Israel’s grossly disproportionate response to a tit-for-tat Palestinian guerrilla raid during which two Israeli soldiers were killed and a third abducted has pushed the impoverished Gaza Strip to the edge of a humanitarian crisis, smashed the barely functioning Palestinian Authority, and threatened the Middle East’s fragile peace. The actions of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert seem intended to create a failed state in Gaza and the West Bank, thus rendering the Israeli claim that “we have no one to talk to” a self-fulfilling prophecy and allowing Israel to continue with its unilateral, annexationist policies, free of the need to even pretend to negotiate.
salon.com
Most Israelis want Hamas leaders assassinated-poll
JERUSALEM (Reuters) – The vast majority of Israelis believe the Jewish state should assassinate leaders of the governing Palestinian movement Hamas in response to the crisis in Gaza, a newspaper poll published on Friday showed.
The survey in the Maariv daily showed 82 percent of Israelis favoured killing leaders of the Islamic militant group, whom Israel holds responsible for the abduction of a soldier on June 25 in a cross-border raid from Gaza and recent rocket attacks.